In a lengthy discussion of divine and human laws, and religion, as a whole, Auden has this to say about Christianity and the modern world. (I quote at length no only to give the context for the surprising statements at the end of the excerpt, but to give you the flavor of the whole work. Note the way he forms a complete thought in several paragraphs, with an opening, development, and conclusion, almost a small essay, over and over again. Then, too, there are the aphorisms and the Curile pronouncements which are a characteristic of this and much of the rest of his prose.)
Primitive religions are practical and political: a list of actions to do and actions to perform in order to survive from one day to the next. This do, and thou shalt live. The wages of sin is death. They assume that society will always remain the same.
Advanced religions are based on the knowledge that society is changing, and attempt to forecast the direction of change. They conceive of an ideal society in the future, try to deduce what its divine laws will be, and set them down so that when man has reached that stage, he will be prepared and know how to act. Until then he must necessarily be sinful.
Our judgement of the great religions will depend upon our estimate of the accuracy of their historical forecast.
Jesus convinces me that he was right because what he taught has become consistently more and more the necessary and natural attitude for man as society has developed the way it has, i.e. he forecast our historical evolution correctly. If one rejects the Gospels, then we must reject modern life. Industrialism is only workable if we accept Jesus' view of life, and conversely his view of life is more workable under industrialism than under any previous form of civilisation. Neither the heathen philosophers, nor Buddha, nor Confucius, nor Mahomet showed his historical insight.
Epicureanism is only possible for the rich. Stoicism for the highly educated. Buddhism makes social life impossible; Confucianism is only applicable to village life; Mahommedism becomes corrupt in cities.
"By their fruits ye shall know them."I don't know what to think of all this, but I want to believe (as it were) that he's right. Still, I had always been taught the opposite, that Christianity was the dogma which interrupted the scientific development of the ancient world until the Renaissance, and I would have to read Plato again to see if he starts with particulars or universals.
If there is one method in which we have faith to-day, and with reason, for it has consistently succeeded, it is the Scientific method of Faith and Scepticism. If there is one method which has consistently failed it has been the method of dogmatic belief backed by Force. But this criterion by observable results is in itself a scientific not a dogmatic criterion. For what is the Scientific attitude but the attitude of love, the love that does not reject even the humblest fact, the love that resists not evil (recalcitrant evidence) nor judges, but is patient, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things.
The teaching of Jesus is the first application of the scientific approach to human behavior--reasoning from the particular to the universal. The Church only too rapidly retreated to the Greek method of starting with the universals and making the particulars fit by force, but the seed once sown, grew in secret. What we call Science is the application of the Way to our relations with the non-human world.
Much to think about.
